England’s Champions League clubs have already pocketed £134 million in performance-related prize money – more than a third more than at the same stage last season.
Liverpool are assured £38.39m for their place in the group and results bonuses and will be guaranteed much more when market pool and coefficients are added.
Of the other two automatic qualifiers for the last 16, Arsenal will secure more than £36.68m while Aston Villa have raised more than £33.69m for results and participation alone.
However, Manchester City’s guaranteed take-home figure of £25.7m after scraping into the play-offs compares unfavourably with the £34.8m they were assured at the end of the group stage last season.
Estimates, which also exclude coefficient-related payments, show last season Manchester United (£16m) and Newcastle United (£16.9m) were the lowest English earners in the group stage for performance-related prize money alone. After finishing top of their group to reach the round of 16 last year Arsenal earned £31m, taking the combined pot for the four clubs to £98.7m.
Overall, this season’s competition should end up proving significantly more lucrative for the successful clubs than last year. The total prize pot is forecast to stand at €2.47 billion (£2.08 billion) – a 22 per cent increase on the €2.03 billion (£1.7 billion) last season.
Telegraph Sport estimates of the windfall already heading towards the English clubs will be significantly lower than their final handouts because of a complicated calculation which is split three ways.
As well as an equal share of €18.6m and performance-related amounts handed out subsequently, there is a complex new “value pillar” payment.
This new payment combines the market pool and coefficients, where clubs would have distribution shaped by the size of their domestic TV deal and historic performances in Europe.
In the 36-team league phase, those in the top eight earned a bye and qualified directly for the round of 16. Those in ninth to 24th entered the first-ever knockout phase play-offs, while the teams ranked 25th or lower were eliminated. Unlike previous editions of the Champions League, no teams dropped down to the Europa League.
The new league phase of the Champions League had divided fans until last night, but Uefa have now declared the changes over the summer an unmitigated success.
“The new format was six years in the making, with no shortage of mathematical models, algorithms and detailed planning behind its inception to make it as entertaining as possible,” the governing body wrote this week.
To support Uefa’s argument that the new format has made the competition more competitive than ever, research from Sportingpedia shows how a host of top teams “underperformed relative to their financial strength”.
“Among the standout insights, Man City (€117.27m per point) and RB Leipzig (€177.42m per point) ranked as the two most inefficient teams, with Leipzig accumulating only three points despite a squad valued at over €532m,” Sportingpedia said.
“On the other hand, Dinamo Zagreb (€7.93m per point), Brest (€9.24m per point), and Celtic (€10.3m per point) emerged as the most efficient teams in the competition.”
